On the Streets of Paris
by Lady Catrin
Summary: As Eponine makes her way to the barricade, she reflects on her feelings toward Marius and Cosette, and her reasons for returning.


On The Streets Of Paris

I knew as soon as I saw him that I loved him. It sounds odd, I know. Perhaps in the beginning it was _what _he was rather than _who _he was that first captured my heart. Educated, kind, everything 'Parnasse and the others are not...how could I help but love him? I also knew it was foolish, stupid to think of him that way. How could anyone love what I have become? God knows I even hate myself. When he looked at me I could see pity in his eyes but not love. I didn't see love in his eyes until that awful day, and then it was for someone else...

I'd been trying to get him away before father and the others robbed the old man they'd gone there to wait for. I didn't want him to see what we did. Ever since I met him things have been different somehow. Its as though, knowing that there are clean and good things in the world makes the life I live seem so much more dirty. For all he knows what I am, I couldn't bear the disgust I knew would be in his eyes if he actually saw. So I ran, and he followed me, and that was when he saw her.

There wasn't much time, but it only took one look at her and the old man for me to know. Father knew too, though it took him a little longer. It was him. The man who had come one night and taken the Lark away with him. I remembered him. It was after that that our luck began to turn...when father dragged all of us down the road which brought me here. And then to see her, clean and happy and with that same expression of pity on her face which I had seen dozens of times on the face of my Monsieur Marius...for a moment I hated her, hated her pity. And then I remembered. I remembered that Christmas so long ago, when I was warm and loved and happy, not knowing how little of that comfortable life was left to me. I remembered how my mother's hand would turn straight from caressing me to deal a blow to the Lark. How it had seemed the natural way of things then, for mother was second only to god and mother said the Lark was to be detested. One image came clearly into my mind from that time. The child Cosette's face, so without hope, so full of that calm resignation that has gone beyond despair. And in that remembered face of years ago I saw my own unhappy heart reflected. How could I hate someone, knowing the kind of misery they had suffered? And one other thought occurred to me in that one precious instant. If she could climb so far out of the misery that had been hers, was there not hope for me also? I almost believed it. And then I looked to Monsieur Marius and I saw how he was gazing at her. I couldn't mistake that look of his when it was what I had so longed to see. But it was not for me. . 

Later, when he asked me to find her, I should have said she had gone away. I could have done that, could have ended it all then and there if I had tried. I'll admit I thought of it. But how could I do that? I know the love he feels because I feel it too. How would making him unhappy ease my own pain? And when he smiled at me and spoke to me kindly, I knew I was lost. I would stop the world from turning if I could, just to see him smile again the way he did when I took him to her. If he won't accept my love, what else could I give to him but to take him to one whose love he can share? 

Perhaps it was stupid of me to think that way. After all, everyone is going to die, now, what does it matter whether he saw her again or not before he dies? His friend Enjolras says we must all put our own feelings aside now for the good of our country. Am I insane to be going back there? I could have asked the old man for shelter for the night when he took the letter from me, I remember he was kind. But it seems right that I should be there with him. 

I know now why they are there. I didn't understand before. I heard Enjolras talk, but I didn't understand. Not until I remembered that look of despair on the Lark's face all those years ago. Its for all the little Larks who no kind old man will save, who will grow up to become what I am now. For all those who could have been that happy creature my Monsieur Marius loves, had it not been for a twist of fate or of birth. None of us will get out of this alive, thats certain. You can't change the world with a flag and a few dozen students, however brave. But you can make a beginning for others to follow. 

I can hear the gunshots now, the barricade is not far from here. Time to go to him.


End file.
